Based on the Fading Suns tabletop roleplaying game published by Holistic Design (who also created the Emperor of the Fading Suns video game), this is a small but long-running Penn-based MUSH.  It's been around since 1999 (created by the creator of the now-defunct but very popular Chiba City MUSH) and and usually has about 10 players connected.  This place is heavily skewed toward a North American playerbase, and the active times run accordingly.  Regardless of timezone, if you like the theme, this is the place to play.

Fading Suns, for those who aren't familiar with the theme, is a blend of medieval and science fiction, set in the New Dark Ages post the year 5000.  More importantly to the atmosphere, this is the last days of the universe.  The peak of human history came two thousand years before, and now all that's left to look forward to is the slow and whimpering death of civilzation.  It is bleak, bloody, and full of human pathos.

In tabletop form Fading Suns tends to be a space-faring adventure game, but in a perpetual world planet-bound setting the game is intensely political.  There are fifteen factions divided between the Noble Houses, the Merchant Guild, and the Universal Church, with power slanted toward the nobles but the guilds and church acting as checks on that power.  Technology is proscribed by the Church, which holds absolute religious authority over an uneducated serf population. Nobles own the land and control the serfs upon it, and write the laws.  The Guilds are the sole keepers of technology, especially space-faring and manufacturing technology.  There are a few persecuted aliens and several enemy races and barbarians. 

The MUSH is set on the lost world of Vargo.  The theme has changed once or twice over the course of the MUSH's history, but is currently centered around a Kurgan (barbarian) invasion and longstanding war.

Quality of RP is insanely high.  Almost all of the writing you'll encounter is top quality, and the characters are complex, multi-layered, and realistic.  There are simply no bad posers in the place, and most of the players are very familiar with the theme.  This is partly a credit to the depth of the theme created by Holistic, and partly a reflection of how much the players love it.  Questions from theme newbies are likely to be answered in detail and through a good deal of healthy debate between the older players. 

Even in slow times, it's fairly easy to find people to play with simply by asking on the public channel.  There are also a lot of very old and thus very powerful characters, but they have been toned down somewhat and most are very accessible to play with, even across vastly different IC ranks.  Players are encouraged to run their own TPs.  Given the political nature of the game, most of the story creates itself without need for admin intervention.

Admin are somewhat less than accessible here than I've seen in other places, and might be as likely to connect dark as to be visible.  Requests might go off into the ether, never to be addressed except through constant pestering.  This is probably the biggest distraction to an otherwise well-designed and heavily loved game.  However, they do run plots actively, including mass combat scenes for the Kurgan war and smaller faction-specific plots.

There is a homegrown econ system and an HSpace system in place. However, the econ system is on its fourth revision and is currently a bit of a mess, and since there's only one IC planet to hang out on, there really aren't many places to fly to.  Many players dispense with rolling dice altogether and simply negotiate scenes OOCly, or decide on matters that take place offstage.

I give this place big points for the sheer quality of writing I've found here, but it loses points for inscrutible admin and just having a small playerbase.

Fading Suns MUSH rates: 3 out of 5 Great Old Ones

No self-respecting geek can claim the title without having seen Firefly, or Serenity, or both.  (Also, no self-respecting geek can avoid making blanket statements encompassing and defining all of geekdom. It's what we do best.)

Joss Whedon is the voice of a generation.  He writes the characters we all wish we had been at age 17, and the dialogue we all want to have at the tip of our tongues.  When l'esprit d'escalier strikes, it's a Joss line we want to run back into the room and shout, "Five minutes ago I should have said ___!"  If you have not seen at least five minutes of every project he has ever worked on, you are doing yourself a disservice and are a shame upon the name of Geek.

Fangirl blathering aside, SerenityMUSH is a genuinely good game in its own right.

Set in the Firefly universe post-movie, it's a Penn-based MUSH that utilizes HSpace and comes with a coded econ and cargo system. (If you like that sort of thing. I'm all about the RP, myself.)  There are usually about 20-30 people connected.  Players can own ships, businesses, hotels, even skyplexes like Niska's.  Most of the planets and moons mentioned in the series and movies are accessible by an easy-to-use and not-too-expensive shuttle system.  On any space-based MUSH, being able to planet-hop is absolutely essential.  At 2am CST on a Thursday with four non-idle players online, you must be able to get from Persephone to Newhall without taking an hour of RL time to get there and start your scene.

The greatest thing about this game is, without a doubt, the admin. 

All the admin are named for the feature characters (Mal, Inara, Kaylee, etc. There's even an Oaty Bar admin.)  I like this, since as a PC I really don't feel like running into Jayne on a regular basis; since he's already a hero in this story, that diminishes my role as a player.   Also, he would kick my ass.

There is almost always an active, on-duty, non-dark admin available.  Every one of them is responsive, enthusiastic, and polite, and only once have I seen a miscommunication between admin result in a confusing ruling for a player.  This was addressed immediately and with apologies on the part of the staffer involved.  Even cooler, every couple of months Mal and Inara (owners of the game) host a live OOC chat via in-game, Yahoo Voice Chat, and Teamspeak, specifically to allow players a chance to tell them what they're doing wrong (or right.)  I have never seen MUSH admin go to this length to create an open forum for airing ideas on making the game better.

One minor quibble I have with the game is the chargen process.  It's extensive, which is a fine design choice on their part, but this creates a sometimes significant lag time of up to 2-3 days to get a character created and into play.  Admin have to read all of the answers to the background questions (there are 15 questions) and review and discuss it.  Then any issues or disagreements are addressed with the player, which often involves going back to tweak your +sheet, update your background, and repeating the cycle again.

After chargen is over, you're set down on the Eavesdown Docks and allowed to join a crew, hang out, get a job, whatever stokes your engines.  Choose a crew carefully, since you'll be obligated to always make sure your character logs off on the ship, and while in the air (sometimes flight times are 3+ RL hours) you're going to be stuck with only those half-dozen people to play with.   This is rather like working for Microsoft: your experience and enjoyment level will depend entirely upon which group you're in. 

Quality of RP is on the medium to high range.  There are a large handful of one-line posers who take a minimalist view on punctuation.  These are in stark contrast to the somewhat smaller handful of players who deliver professional-quality writing and storytelling.  Most fall somewhere in the mid range, but I give them bonus points for being on the whole very familiar with and dedicated to the theme.  Additionally, there are a few very active plot-running admin who will pull players of various skill levels into scenes together on a regular basis.  These plots might range from world-affecting kidnap/murder plots to, in one case, a ship being infested with a small and very hard-to-capture rat.  Creativity levels are high in this game.

Despite the inconveniences inherent in a space-based game and the lengthy chargen process, the admin and some truly fine RPers make this a great translation of the Firefly theme and a fun place to play. 

SerenityMUSH rates:  4 out of 5 Great Old Ones

Tags: firefly, mush

There are plethora of blogs in the world, and at least 90% of them are for reviewing video games. (A slight exaggeration. It may be closer to 80%.) Once in awhile, they're even written by girls.

But I've never seen one dedicated to MU*s.

Possibly this is because MU*s are free. No one gets paid to make them, administrate them, or, unfortunately, review them. The day when MUDs and MUSHes were teh 133t place to hang out has passed along with Y2K and the Macarena. But they're still going strong. They still have a dedicated fanbase that absolutely loves creating virtual worlds through the written word rather than with Maya and C# and 87 million dollars.

Boys and girls, I am one of those fans. A bona fide fangirl since ninteen*cough**mumble*. I've been an addict since being drawn in by the beckoning green glow of that first dummy Unix terminal. Jobs, boyfriends, and college classes have been sacrificed to my addiction. Occasionally I'll get clean. There have been entire years in which I've been MU*-free and proud to have a life. I've climbed the jungle temples of Cambodia, ridden a motorcycle through New Hampshire, strolled the Royal Mile of Edinburgh, and done it all in the real world, in meatspace.

But now, my friends, I chase the glowing green dragon once again. A single girl on a quest to find the perfect online roleplaying experience. I seek that holiest of grails: the most awesome MUSH in the world. I know it's out there somewhere.

These are my adventures, real and imagined, written and fantasied. Welcome to the journey.